The Reasons for Baby's Crying

Crying is a baby's instinctive reaction, and babies often express their needs via crying. There are two main reasons for baby's crying, one is a normal physiological reaction, which is called non-pathological crying; the other one is caused by disease, called pathological crying.

Reasons for Non-pathological Crying

Multiple factors may lead to non-pathological crying, such as the baby feels hungry or thirsty; the diaper gets wet; the baby wants to sleep, etc. It is relatively easy to distinguish such a situation. Generally, when the baby's needs are met, the crying will stop, and the duration of crying will not exceed half an hour. Specifically, the reasons for non-pathological crying are listed as follows.

(1) Hunger

This kind of crying is mostly before breastfeeding, the baby cries mostly for a long time and shows impatience, his/her head keeps tilting to the sides looking for something, and mouth makes sucking movements. If the mother picks up the baby at this time, he/she will arch the head towards the mother's chest.

(2) Thirst

Babies with hoarse cries and dry-looking lips and mouths mostly occur after excessive sweating in the summer, dry outdoors in autumn, and after sweating due to excessive clothing in winter.

(3) Coldness

The baby's face is slightly pale, the body is curled up, and likes to shrink to a warm place when he/she cries. 

(4) Heat

The baby's face is flushed, there is a lot of sweat on the forehead or in the blanket, and the palms of the hands and feet may become cool because of a lot of sweating.

(5) Sleepiness or Tiredness

When babies are sleepy or tired, their cries are low without tears, and they do not move their hands and feet as much as usual and close their eyes from time to time. Some babies have their own sleep signals, such as rubbing their eyes, scratching their ears, etc.

(6) Wet Diaper

The babies' crying is smooth and elongated in tone, and they stop crying as if it remembers something and then cries again, probably because the wet diaper makes the baby uncomfortable.